Sorry for being so blunt

Sometimes I just want to block her number. Forget I met her. And other times I wish it was easier to see her. Maybe the latter is the way I feel when I don't text her for more than one day. It may seem like a short time. But she’s the one I text everyday. She’s the one I text to say “Hello”. 

Last time I met her, it was two years ago, but she knows more about me than friends who live here. It seems so weird to me, but she told me it's normal. She knows many people who are part of her life, who are not part of her daily life. Okay. But I would like to be part of it. Or maybe not. It would be too dangerous. I’d have to pay everyday attention to what I say. I never had a filter and I always had problems with people because of what I say. But after the tumor it seems like I took away the filter during the surgery.

Yesterday she sent me a photo taken with her new colleagues. She was the one I knew, but it was hard for me to find her in that photo. She was in the high left corner. So far from the camera. But not so far as she would. I know she would have preferred to be far enough from the phone's lens to look like part of the background in the photo. But I also know that if there hadn't been a phone taking a picture, she would have smiled naturally. And she would have helped others to smile. I saw that during calls. I saw that when we were in the office.

A new colleague told her that the atmosphere has changed because of her. I don’t know who it is, but I totally agree. 

When I met her, I was the coach who was there for her. I was a father who helped a child to walk straight, looking right away. Now when I text her, I hope she hasn’t become too grown-up to listen to me anymore. I know. She told me I can text her whatever I want. It doesn’t matter the way. But I’m always paying attention. The topic, the content, the moment. I've got a terrible memory, but I remember every single screw-up I've ever made. They are just shorts in my memory.

An image that comes to mind and makes me laugh, is of a time when I really made her angry. Picture her with messy hair. Picture her staring at the screen, super angry. Picture her thinking that my head, banged against the wall multiple times, might not hold up after the second or third hit.

But. But on my side, we’re not in the same room. Okay. She could come pick me up at home. But I live about an hour away from her, and she would have to drive all that way just to bang my head. Given her anger, that might be a good reason. But still, not enough to go through all that trouble. Sooner or later, I’d be curious to know what the limit is for how far she’d be willing to drive for an hour to finish the job that tumor started.

Sure. Once she arrives, she should be able to get in. But she could play it smart. She could just tell me she’s here. It might not seem like a clever plan. But I’d let her in right away, without thinking that about an hour earlier she had threatened to come and finish the job that the tumor started. I repeated the concept twice to emphasize it. To annoy her while she reads, I could add a metaphor. In fact, I could fill the entire text with metaphors.

I could lengthen the text by adding nonsense. I’m not sure if her destructive instincts are increased by metaphors or my nonsense. If I had the courage to ask her, I would add this information in a second version of this text. If you happen to read it and find it somewhere in the text, know that I had the courage to do it and I survived. Another piece of information: I would still be an hour away from her. Another piece of information: she didn’t have the desire to drive an hour to finish the job that tumor started.

So. Messy hair, killer eyes on the screen. Sleeves of a red shirt rolled up to highlight her attention to contemporary fashion trends. I just wanna say I always laugh when I read the last sentence.

After this moment, everything becomes fast. And the indicator of my terror shoots up high where only the color red can reach. 

Hands gripping the desk. Two eyes are twitching. Usually, it would be just one. I think it’s a whole new level. The head turns to the window on the left. For her, it must be on the right. Meet flips the image as a mirror. Hands pressing hard on the desk. And off we go. The chair, specially equipped with wheels, shoots toward the back wall, fast and furious. Like the movies: Fast and furious - Then something like: The furious guy. I never saw them. Too many cars. Too many men. Too much testosterone. But maybe she did it. 

For her cars, men and testosterone are never enough. Or she would add a dragon and one or two robots. A movie based on a story of ten or twenty-two men who fight against a dragon driving cars. Fast and furious cars while they drink testosterone shooting the dragon and singing a death metal song. I don’t know. Dragons driving cars while they shoot testosterone against robots who are men. Cars that are robots that drink testosterone and shoot against a man who fights a dragon. He doesn’t know anything about robots. He’s a man from the Middle ages. I don’t know why in the Middle Ages Europe was full of dragons. 

I’m sweating cold. But I quickly realize that the scene is not taking place in my room. It’s remote. I let out a sigh of relief. With my right foot. I never know if she might see the scene. Sometimes with her I would like to be a dragon. Or a robot. Or a car. Or just a man.

But I’m just someone who needs a routine to feel safe. My car parked somewhere, the number of steps I have to take to come back home. A scooter to get back to my car as fast as I can.

And I’m always looking for someone to cling to, especially women. I know. I can’t hide myself with them. I hope they can understand what I feel. And when I find a woman I can feel safe with, it’s a special moment for me. I can forget I’m scared. I just enjoy the moments I live with.

If I find them on my personal Google Map, they are the points I move through. These women are the only visible points on my map, and they are connected by thin lines. Around these lines, there’s nothing. A no woman's land where I don’t know.

They are just like the lonely lights of a distant lighthouse. I move into the night, the sea under my body and their lights to know where to go to be safe. Every now and then, a new light appears on my map, opening up new paths for me to navigate safely. Maybe I'm like the Marco Polo of my own life.

But I’m here and I move through them in my imagination. I don’t have to go anywhere to feel closer or more distant. And maybe they feel the same way. I don’t know. But the distance isn’t just physical; sometimes I can touch it as I touch my emotions.

People who light up my life. People who planted a seed and became a tree while I talk with them in my mind. I look at the tree and tell it the story of that seed I knew and how it became a tree while I watch these people walk away. And I’m glad they did.

Maybe I’m happy even when I hear those stories from afar. Pieces of adventures I haven’t lived because I wasn’t there. 

I’ve been told many times that I have to be ready for when people leave. That I shouldn’t get too attached to others. That everyone leaves sooner or later. I don’t know. I should ask my surgeon if it’s possible to remove people from your mind with a procedure. Otherwise, I don’t think I can. And so people are there. Far from me but living in my mind every day.

But for her joy, I like to describe what I feel when I think about her using a long metaphor. The good thing is that despite its length, it’s very cheerful and will leave her energized, ready to face Monday morning. 

If you want to experience what she had to go through, stop here. Keep reading next Monday morning. Okay. If it were Monday morning, keep going. Or just keep going anyway. Because if I had given it to her on Monday morning, I’m sure she wouldn’t have read it until the evening or Tuesday. 

I think her reaction will be one or two lines on Telegram, and the text will probably end with: “Sorry for being so blunt”. That’s fair enough. It’s something I appreciate about her. After smashing a baseball bat into the unfortunate guy's skull, she says sorry. It’s very cute, as they would say on Roblox. Okay. At that point she thought: “What’s that shit bro?”. Without bro maybe. I don’t know.

And I don’t know what expression she has when she writes “Sorry for being so blunt”. But I imagine her feeling proud of herself, thinking: “Okay, he won’t survive. But if he has made it this far, I have apologized. And anyway, if it weren’t like that, fuck you man!”

To make things worse after that metaphor, I’ll wrap it up with a nice “Bro”. Okay… Cool… I’m feeling super brave today! Let’s close with the metaphor:

Last year I went to a kite festival for the first time. I saw them go up. I saw the colors going up and getting lost in the ever-distant sky, dancing and moving further and further away. And I saw them and I was happy to see them playing. They flew above my head so high that I could no longer touch them. If they were close, if they were on the ground near me, they wouldn't have that wonder that they have up there in the sky. In the sky that is far, so far away from me. Bro.